


Twilight Kingdom

by Caelucere



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelucere/pseuds/Caelucere
Summary: When she is fifteen, a mysterious message appears on her tablet. Against all logic and reason, Satya responds. The result leaves her on the run from no less than three different organisations, waging a war of her own alongside a rogue hacker. But as the pressure increases, chaos rises and alliances begin to waver, Satya has to decide for once and for all what's most important to her before she loses it.





	1. XO

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I ship Symmetra with half of the Overwatch roster? Oops.  
> I wrote this all in one night so I'll inevitably re-read it and find some spelling mistakes to correct. Oh well.

She’s fifteen the first time it happens.

Satya Vaswani is an emotional mess, in the depths of her brain is turmoil like her thoughts have descended into a whirlpool. She digs her nails into her palms and feels the pain, sharp and cutting. Usually that distracts her, but now it only makes her feel worse and the feeling clots in her throat so that she can hardly breathe.

Their latest test rankings are on the screen. Next to the name of Satya Vaswani is 7/13.

She’s in the bottom half, and she wants to puke. Everyone can see it. Her thoughts descend down slippery slope after slope, careering down the mountain. Everyone can see that she came seventh, which means that everyone can see that she is a failure, which means that everyone knows that she has failed Vishkar, failed her purpose.

It’s with tightly clenched fists that she pivots on her heel and returns to her room because if she doesn’t flee she’ll melt, right in front of everyone, and it will all be over.

But on her own she can’t scream. She can’t even vent it. The emotions and the stress and the fear are all reaching a fever pitch but there’s something stunted, they can’t get out, and it just makes her feel worse and worse as she twists her fingers in her hair and wills for it to just burst out of her so that she can carry on and claw her way back to respectability.

Her hands scrabble on her desk and hit the cool surface of her Vishkar-standard education tablet. In the absence of any other way to let it out, she switches to her tablet notes and begins to pound out everything that she wants to scream. It’s incoherent, a mix of her native Telugu and the Hindi they speak in Utopaea, except the former can’t transcribe in the text and so she can hardly read what she’s writing herself, hardly knows what it is, but it’s therapeutic so she continues to write away, feels the stress and anguish bubble down until –

_¿Ta b?_

Satya pauses and stares at the words that have somehow manifested in the midst of her incoherent rambling. Perhaps to call them words would be too generous. More letters than anything else. Latin alphabet, although her preliminary Spanish lessons at the academy mean the upside down question mark is suspicious. She blinks, and wonders if somehow she has managed to subconsciously vent in another language.

But it’s not a language. It’s three letters, not words.

She responds with equal brevity.

_?_

It takes about two seconds for a response to appear.

_¿Estás bien?_

When she doesn’t reply within a split second – primarily because she’s too dumbfounded by the sheer absurdity of what is happening and the impossibility of such a circumstance – another message appears.

_¿Hablas español?_

That’s something she can answer, at least.

_Un poco._

_¿Inglés?_

_Yes_

Satya can hardly understand what’s happening, what she’s doing. Either the tablet is speaking to her, someone in Vishkar genuinely cares about her state of mind, or someone has hacked the tablet. The third is an impossibility, because Vishkar equipment is virtually unhackable. The second is highly unlikely. The first is bordering on childish fantasy.

_You ok?_

She bites her lip and subconsciously tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Satya reminds herself that there are far better ways to spend her time than to have a conversation with her tablet, and that if any of her superiors knew she’d probably be out of the academy in a flash.

_Yes_

_Liar_

Satya taps her nails on her desk. This is wrong, this is incredibly wrong.

_You should not be hacking a Vishkar device_

_Whoops, looks like I already have_

She scowls and turns off the tablet.

* * *

 

Satya comes to call the tablet hacker Uda, because they always write in purple. For the first few weeks, she does not reply. She ignores each and every message in the hopes that eventually they will take a hint and leave her alone. Part of her wonders if she should go straight to her superiors and report it, but she does not, and the longer she leaves it the more anxious she becomes about telling them.

After the first few weeks, she begins to assess the situation with the cool-minded analytical thought process that has gotten her so far. First of all, she appears to be the only person who knows about Uda – certainly, nobody has approached her yet, which would suggest that they have somehow managed to remain unnoticed. Secondly, they seem to be capable of hacking more than just her tablet. Just about any device that she sits down at has purple text on its screen within a minute.

Uda seems to have an affinity for her, perhaps even a fixation. Satya doesn’t know how, or why, this came to be, only that it somehow manages to evolve from being an annoyance to tolerable to something quite different. It isn’t necessarily pleasant, but there comes to be a comfort, even a familiarity to seeing those messages. She has sifted through possibilities – a sentient AI, maybe? – but none of them change the fact that she comes to see Uda as a necessary part of her daily life. If she is stressed, she sees the colour purple and feels herself relax again.

It takes six months for her to finally reply. It’s a mistake, but it’s one that she makes again and again. She has always played by the rules, but there is something quietly exhilarating about having a secret of her own, one that is harmless but hers. She holds it close to her, carries it with her like a superstitious person might keep a lucky charm with them. She falls asleep with it close to her chest.

Uda always signs off their messages with XO. She doesn’t understand it, but they become her favourite two letters.

* * *

 

She does not realise what a necessary part of her Uda has become until the replies stop. It’s an abrupt halt, so much so that it can only mean one thing – either Uda, whatever it is, has been terminated, or she has somehow managed to repel it. Satya is by this point twenty-two years old, and it is only once her nameless, faceless closest companion is forcibly torn away from her that she, suddenly cleft in two, realises what they meant to her.

For the first few weeks, she just assumes that they are busy, or their AI has glitched. After two weeks, she begins to feel something that feels curiously like the homesickness her eleven-year-old self had felt upon first leaving Hyderabad – an ache that, for all intents and purposes, has no rational explanation for its existence, but wedges itself between her ribs nonetheless. Satya tells herself that, just as her younger self should not have missed the filthy, disease-ridden slums of her birthplace, she should not miss trivial purple text.

But she does. She does not have any messages to look back on; they always delete, Uda is good at covering their tracks. But Satya lies in bed at night and sees purple patterns dancing on the ceiling. She has conversations in her mind. She writes XO on the corners of her notes.

She is twenty-two years old, she is now Symmetra, she travels all over the world and does difficult tasks in the name of order and harmony and a good future for humanity. She has no reason to feel as though she has lost so much. But the loss aches nonetheless.

After seven months and twenty-two days, a message appears on her tablet.

_Miss me?_

She doesn’t know why, but she cries.

* * *

 

When she is twenty-six, the slums of Rio de Janeiro burn in front of her eyes, and in turn burn onto her memories. Later she sits in a hotel room in São Paulo, one that is clean and calm, and she spills all of her doubts and worries to Uda. They pour out of her with the inevitability of a river flowing to the sea. They gurgle and foam like rapids, they meander, but they reach it. She doesn’t even know why she is saying it, until midway through when she realises that this is what she has been wanting to tell Uda for more than a decade.

There is a long pause before a reply arrives, longer than Uda ever leaves.

_You know there is an alternative_

_Pardon?_

_You can leave Vishkar._

Satya realises that she is trembling. Her hands shake as she types out a reply.

_They would take my hard light away_

_Not if you run away. I could help._

Realisation crashes upon her like a wave. Uda makes sense. It all makes sense. The last decade of messages, ever since the first one, she suddenly realises what they were for.

And she becomes livid. Because she has finally worked it out, and the truth is ugly.

The truth is that the past decade of something resembling friendship has been nothing but a ploy to turn her away from Vishkar and gain her hard light technology. She’s been a pawn the whole time. She’s been even more of a fool than she’d thought.

Satya throws the tablet out of the window of her hotel room. It falls down, down, down. It shatters on the pavement below. She goes out in the darkness and gathers up the broken pieces, then disposes of them. Uda must get the message, because they don’t attempt to contact her again, even though she knows they’re fully capable of using any other device.

She can be grateful for that at least, she supposes.

* * *

 

When she is twenty-eight, she does the unthinkable.

It is early evening in Caracas. The sun is setting over the city’s favelas, surrounded by hard-light walls. Satya can see them from this distance, in Sanjay’s office in the Vishkar tower. They glitter in the fading light that streaks gold and rose across the sky.

“A tragedy, really.” He sighs. “If they had not rejected our earlier proposal, then perhaps they would have had a proper water supply. Proper sanitation. Perhaps this would not have happened.”

“A tragedy.” She echoes, hollowly. There is a corpse in the street. From this distance, it appears so small. If she squints it is a discarded rag doll, not a person.

“At least they allowed us to set up the quarantine zone.” He continues. There is a glass of wine in his hand, and one in hers, but she has yet to drink it. To do so would seem coarse, somehow, unfeeling. “I’ve been speaking to the Venezuelan authorities. Once this disease has run its course, they should allow us to rebuild the slums. Proper sanitation. Clean water. Not that plagued river.”

Satya sips some wine before placing it on the desk behind her. It burns hot in the back of her throat. She keeps her eyes on the waters of Rio Guaire. There is a kind of tranquillity to the scene, she thinks, and wonders whether or not she should be the one to break it.

“I thought you said that the virus was transmitted by skin-to-skin contact, and that is why we set up the wall?”

There is a brief pause. He does not turn to look at her. A mistake, she thinks, and she almost pities Sanjay for making such a mistake. The wine burns in her chest, in her gut, something burns and she begins to feel her calmness infuse with something else, something alien and unfamiliar but so intrinsically right.

Does she dare? She does. Satya traces her fingers over the crystal lens of her gauntlet, then twists them.

“That is what I said, Vaswani.”

“Is it?”

He turns to look at her, but hardly utters a word before a hard-light knife is thrust into his neck.

Sanjay at first stumbles back a step. His hands reach for the knife, as if confirming that it is really there. They brush against the hard-light, and he looks at her, his eyes bulging and terrified and laced with something that might be betrayal. She’s not sure. All of her emotions seem to have ceased to function, she stares at him as he flounders as if she were but an onlooker. He knocks over the wine glass, having already dropped his own, and she watches the red liquid pool on the white floor. He can hardly speak, although his rasping breaths sound like they are trying to form her name.

Just before he falls, he slams his hand down on a button on his desk. She does not bother trying to flee. They arrive within thirty seconds, and she is standing by the window, staring out at the favelas of Caracas as the sun bleeds its last few minutes of daylight.

* * *

 

She thought that she was used to the colour white. Everything in Utopaea had been white, streamlined. It was calm.

Her room is also white. The neon light is white, on day and night, although she has no concept of the difference. She wears only white. When she closes her eyes all she sees is white. There is a white screen with stark black text that counts down the hours and minutes until she will next be fed, next receive water, next be able to urinate or defecate.

Never let it be said that Vishkar neglects the care of its prisoners.

She sees white and sees wine pooling. The memory is so potent that she can almost smell it.

Satya wonders why they don’t just execute her and be done with it, but she knows that she is too valuable. Better to ensure her undying loyalty for good than waste a perfectly good architech. They tell her that if she is good she can have her arm back. They ask her why she had felt the need to murder her colleague. They tell her that they expected better.

In all honesty, she doesn’t know the answers to anything. There is no need for answers in a world of only white anyway. She traces patterns. She counts. She designs skyscrapers in her mind.

One day, however, she feels herself reborn from her living death when the screen shows a different message.

_Miss me?_

Satya manages to count to fifteen before the door opens. The doorway is empty. She wonders if she is hallucinating. It seems to be the only rational explanation, that she is completely delusional, that they have finally broken her.

Perhaps she has become numb to absurd happenings, because when a woman appears in front of her out of seemingly thin air, she doesn’t even blink.

There is a silence. So Uda is a woman, she thinks. Not an AI – at least, she doesn’t look like one. Her eyes trace patterns of wiring like blood vessels on her skin. Purple in her hair, her clothes, her eyes. Even in flesh and blood there is a quality about her that is unreal. It is like an imaginary friend that has suddenly gained a human form. Satya reaches out, to see if she will disappear the moment her hand makes contact.

The hand that grasps hers is real, however.

“I read about what you did. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

Her voice is hoarse and doesn’t sound like it belongs to her, but she responds anyway. “I did not either.” Then she shakes her head and laughs, because she can hardly believe the situation. “You’re Uda. You’re actually Uda.”

“Is that what you called me?” The woman giggles. “I prefer Sombra.”

“Well, Sombra.” Satya replies, and she’s shocked by how easy it is, like picking up a tune from her childhood. “You got in here. Get me out of here.”

* * *

 

The sun is rising when they finally arrive in Dorado after the most chaotic day of her entire life. She sees her reflection in a window. Satya is gaunt now. Her hair has grown too long, it is greasy and unkempt. Her white dress slips off where one arm is missing. Her cheekbones protrude unsettlingly.

So she is free. To what end? To what purpose? She sees only the Satya of Hyderabad. It’s like the last seventeen years or so of her life have disappeared and she is right back where she started.

“Cheer up.” Sombra tells her, turning her attentions away from the van that she may or may not have hacked for them. There is a strange connection. The familiarity, yes, but there is another foreign degree of separation. Talking to a line of text is very, very different to having the real entity in front of you. She doesn’t know where she stands.

But there is also a sense of completeness, one that she shouldn’t feel because her whole life and purpose has been taken away from her, one that is entirely irrational but beautiful in how it defies seemingly all reason. The secret she once cared for and protected blooms lilac daybreak in her chest. She doesn’t understand it, but she rather likes it.

“I worked for seventeen years of my life to be an architech. It is all gone now. I have no purpose. Tell me again why I should ‘cheer up’?”

She sees the hacker’s reflection approaching her in the glass’ reflection. Her hands are clasped behind her back. It’s so Uda, she realises, Sombra is every part the Uda she had cried over and cared for. She is chaotic, she is morally ambiguous, she is peppy, she is loud, she is everything that Satya despises yet she is a necessity and has been for a long time.

“I got you a gift.”

Satya turns her head to see her arm. The sleek white, the pulsing blue crystal. She blinks in disbelief.

“You stole that, I presume.”

“No, Vishkar just gave it to me.”

She smiles at that, weakly, before taking the prosthetic limb and reattaching it. Something warm courses through her, an unstoppable force of nature. She spins a hard-light wire frame between her fingers. The first attempt falls apart – lack of practice – but the second forms an elaborate polygon, one that she spins to become ever-more complex.

“What is it that you want?” Sombra asks. Satya looks up and sees – what does she see? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t need to understand, she realises, she just needs to have it nearby.

Satya focusses on the hard light wire frame. “Vishkar burned the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. They poisoned the waters of Guaire. They have manipulated me my entire life, they tried to break me. They took my family from me. They tried to take my individuality. What do you think I want?”

A smile. One that is audacious, one that is somehow familiar. “Then I suppose we’re on the same page.”

“Yes.” The shape disappears into shimmering light. “Yes, Sombra. We are on the same page.”

She hears a laugh, as the bells of Dorado chime for the start of the day. “I’ve waited thirteen years for you to realise that. You and I, Symmetra, we’re going to go far.”

When Symmetra looks up, the ache is gone. It is all gone. She doesn’t understand why.

And what’s more, she doesn’t mind.


	2. Between the Motion and the Act

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overwatch receive a contract to retrieve a rogue architech. Symmetra and Sombra begin their crusade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you know how I said that XO would be a self-contained oneshot?  
> Yeah, didn't happen.

It has been four days since Talon received message from Sombra. Widowmaker nonchalantly cleans her rifle while Reaper tears the room apart. It is dark and stuffy – she hates this place, she really does, their French base is so much more interesting. This is dull. She has been waiting here for four days.

“She’s doing this on purpose –“ he hisses, voice like gravel, as he kicks over another chair. Soon she supposes he’ll have nothing left to kick. “- when will she stop playing games? This isn’t a game, god damn it!”

Widowmaker is not fazed; then again, she rarely is. It’s not in her artificial nature. Her hands reek of gun oil from her task, and it is distasteful, but it is worth it, especially if her suspicions are correct.

“Of course she is doing it on purpose.” She responds calmly as the chair is shot to smithereens. Splinters dance on the edge of her vision. His temper tantrums usually do not last this long. It is usually enough for him to smash just one piece of furniture. She supposes that being essentially dead without the benefit of having an unfeeling void for a heart would do that to a man. “A hacker like her does not lose communication by accident.”

He looks at her. At least, he inclines his mask towards her, although whether or not he actually has eyes underneath that mask is a mystery that she neither has an answer for nor does she particularly want one.

“You saw this coming, didn’t you?”

She shrugs. “Suspected it.”

“And you didn’t say?”

“I am an assassin, not an investigator. I kill who I am told. I was not told to kill her.”

He slams a fist down on the table. She feels it reverberate from the sheer force. “And you didn’t think to mention it?”

Widowmaker slowly, for the first time, looks up from her gun to fix him with a cool-eyed fixed stare, like daggers of ice nailing him to the wall. “And tell me, Reaper, had I mentioned my suspicion, would you have acted upon it? Or would you have told me that I was becoming foolish like Amélie again?”

Silence. When he sighs it is the sound of heat fizzling into steam. She turns her attentions back to her gun and he continues. For all of his emotions and melodrama, he is a shrewd tactician, far more than she is. Widowmaker works on her killer instinct and cunning, but wherever his experience has come from, it is formidable. “We have to first work out where she’s been these past four days. Whether Sombra’s been planning this for a while or not, there has to be a reason why she left now. I’ll notify research to look for reports of anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all. Sombra will have a reason, and we need to find that reason.” He folds his arms and growls, a low, guttural sound. “It had better be a damn good one if she’s sending us on this wild goose chase.

Widowmaker smiles as she holds up her rifle. How clean it is. What a thing of beauty it is, a masterpiece. Sleek, elegant, deadly. It is her one true best friend. She grips it so that her finger rests on the trigger.

“Then the hunt is on.”

* * *

 

The name ‘Vishkar’ is one that instantly provokes distaste in the room. Lúcio goes almost blue in the face. Hana bites her lip and shuffles uneasily in her seat next to him. Torbjörn scowls, Reinhardt coughs, McCree snorts and Lena can almost swear that Soldier 76 raises his eyebrows which, considering that he has a visor covering his entire face, is no mean feat. She glances over at Winston and gives him a small smile that she hopes is reassuring, although she can do little to alleviate the sour atmosphere of the room.

“As I was saying-“ he carries on, uncertain at first, before he clears his throat and speaks again with renewed confidence, “-Vishkar have hired us to-“

“-What are we now, mercenaries?” This time it’s Fareeha, her jaw set grimly. She is sweaty from her recent workout, but there is no trace of exhaustion in her steely eyes. Winston meets her gaze.

“Until the Petras Act is repealed, yes, we technically are. And illegal mercenaries at that. Vishkar are a powerful company-“ (out of the corner of her eye Lena sees Hana place a warning hand on Lúcio’s arm as he quietly seethes) “-and should this assignment go smoothly we may have their support in negotiations with the UN.”

“And this assignment is?” Genji, this time, his robotic voice calm and soothing. His posture is rigid, alert. Lena hears Lúcio mutter something under his breath, but fortunately Winston seems to take no notice. The atmosphere in the room is tense, hostile, and her heart honestly reaches out to the gorilla in his struggle.

Winston brings up two pictures on the screen. One is of a woman, thirty years at the oldest, with dark skin, molten amber eyes and high cheekbones. There is something almost regal about her appearance and dignified in how she stares blankly into the screen. Her thick dark hair is wound up into a bun. She’s a stunner, Lena will admit, although there is a severity to her expression that borders on intimidating.

The other photograph is of a young man, slightly lighter skinned than her and with his hair and expression arranged equally neatly. They wear matching white and violet uniforms, and Lena notices the Vishkar logo on their lapels.

“The woman on the left is Satya Vaswani, one of Vishkar’s most talented hard light architechs,” Winston starts, pointing to her before moving to the man, “and to the right is Sanjay Korpal, who worked as a diplomatic envoy. The two collaborated on several projects together, including in Marrakesh, Bangkok, Rio de-“

Lena instinctively flinches at the interruption, only for it to not be the passionate outburst that she had expected upon hearing the city’s name. Instead, it is Mercy, who until now has been sitting quietly with her hands clasped on the table in front of her. “Pardon me, Winston, you said that Korpal worked as a diplomatic envoy. Does he not anymore?”

She watches as Winston cleans his glasses. He had probably been preparing for that briefing, and she does pity him for being cut short.  Once done he puts them back on and stares pointedly at Mercy.

“I used the past tense, Doctor Ziegler, because six months ago, while they were working on a project in Caracas together, Vaswani murdered Korpal in his office.”

Silence falls over the room save for a low whistle, probably from Jesse. Lena scrutinises the photographs, tries to imagine one killing the other. It doesn’t work. It is Ziegler who speaks again.

“If I may ask, how did she do it?”

Winston turns to his tablet and begins to tap away. “Vishkar have provided us with footage of the incident. Whilst it is somewhat gruesome, it is important to see.”

For the following minute there are no interruptions. In fact, the scene is nowhere near as gruesome as some of what they’ve seen on the battlefields, Lena thinks. They have all seen far gorier deaths. Yet there is something chilling in seeing the two talking so calmly before, in the space of a second, Vaswani stabs Korpal in the neck with almost surgical precision. From the camera’s angle, she can’t see the young woman’s expression. Only her victim’s panic, and the perfect stillness of the killer.

The silence persists after the footage is finished. For once, nobody is there to interrupt Winston when he starts speaking. “After the incident, Vaswani somehow managed to evade capture and has done so until now. Vishkar have asked that Overwatch track down and subdue Vaswani.”

“Hang on.” Fareeha’s forehead is creased into a frown. “Why ask Overwatch? We’re here to fight Talon and other threats to security, not one woman.”

“Hard light is extraordinary.” Mercy replies. “I saw some Vishkar projects on my travels. You mentioned Marrakesh, right? Incredible, what that technology is capable of. If Vaswani has truly gone rogue, then the potential threat she poses is incredible.”

“What I want to know-“ (Lena bites her lip here because she is already worried about Winston melting under the room’s harsh scrutiny without Lúcio contributing more) “-is how they have footage of the murder and not her escape. Vishkar’s a high-security place – trust me, I’ve stolen from them, it was a nightmare – so how did that happen?” Honestly, everyone just seems surprised at how calm Lúcio seems, although his arms are folded in a way that clearly indicates scepticism.

Winston does his best, but Lena sees him plucking at the hairs on the back of his hand, a nervous tic he’s had for as long as she’s known him. “That would be the concern. The security cameras, and the entire of the Vishkar building’s security system, went down after this. Nobody has any idea how Vaswani evaded capture.”

“Do we have an approximate location?” 76 asks, at which Winston grimaces.

“Unfortunately, no. Six months is a long time. The best case scenario would be that she is still lying low in Venezuela or elsewhere in South America, but in that time she could have gone north or even overseas. That’s why our first task is to find where she is. Vishkar are carefully monitoring reports of hard light usage to try and find her, but we need to pull our weight as well. For the next week, we will go on no missions and dedicate our resources to finding an approximate location for Vaswani.”

The room is filled with murmurs of dissent. Fareeha’s eyes narrow, Mercy looks down pensively at the table and Torbjörn mutters something in Swedish, but there appears to be overall, if begrudging, acceptance of the situation. Lena breathes a sigh of relief and gives Winston a thumbs up, although it’s a sour victory at best. The rest of the meeting is dedicated to assigning responsibilities – who should reach out to their contacts, what areas they are to focus on, the resources available to them and that Vishkar have provided.

Lena stays until the room is empty, save for Winston gathering up his possessions. As soon as he knows that they’re alone she sees the gorilla deflate. It has been a long time since they had a briefing so fraught, not since they were sent to defend the Shambali monks in Nepal, when anti-omnic tensions had reached a fever pitch in the room.

“I think you did quite a good job, if it’s any consolation.”

He turns and manages a half-hearted smile, but she can see the worry lines on his brow. Winston is still plucking the hairs, and that’s how she knows there’s something wrong. Gingerly, she makes her way over to him, biting her lip. “There’s more to this, isn’t there? You don’t think-“

“She’s run off with Talon? We don’t know. I just hope she hasn’t.”

* * *

 

“It just doesn’t add up, Hana.”

The MEKA pilot sighs and puts down her game. It’s been a long time since she’s been able to relax and have time for herself, and she had been hoping to do just that. Eat snacks, play video games with her best friend, watch a cheesy movie. But the nature of their latest mission has rendered that an impossibility. Even when explicitly told that he does not have to associate himself with the mission if he does not want to, Lúcio is acting like a man obsessed.

“You’ve said that several times.” She replies, glancing over at him. “It’s just gone midnight. Can’t you just go to sleep?”

“You’re free to go back to your room and sleep if you want to.” He responds sharply, and Hana huffs out a sigh of annoyance, partly offended by his tone. The DJ is currently typing away furiously at his computer, occasionally pausing to scrawl a note somewhere. He hadn’t even gone to dinner that day. The plate of food she’d brought for him sits untouched.

“I’m not going,” she replies, swinging her legs off the bed, “Until you stop acting like a madman and actually look after yourself. Can't you do this in the morning? Or at least - I don't know, less obsessively?"

He wheels around on the chair to fix her with an indignant stare. “How are you not angry? Don’t you see that there’s something shifty here?”

She's always known about this side of him, the one that arises every single time that Vishkar is mentioned. But it's never manifested into such a drive before. Usually it's ranting and raving and anger, not this direct, borderline dominating obsessiveness.

Hana folds her arms and raises a sceptical eyebrow. She speaks slowly and deliberately, defensive yet fighting to be calm. It's not an easy task. “I’m not an idiot. This whole mission stinks, but either way, what Mercy said is true. Fishy or not fishy, it’s better that we find Vaswani and stop the wrong people getting hard light.”

Lúcio groans and wheels back around. “It doesn’t make sense. Six months? If she’s been missing for six months, why are Vishkar only hiring us now?”

“Maybe they thought they could find her by themselves and only just realised that they can’t?” She suggests, only barely stifling a yawn in the process. “Or they hired, say, Helix first, and when that fell through they went to Overwatch?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Damn, Hana. Since when were you so easily convinced?”

“I’m being reasonable, there’s a difference.” She replies curtly, getting to her feet. “Now will you please just go the fuck to sleep?”

* * *

 

Satya twists a hard light wireframe between her fingers. This one is in the shape of a dodecahedron. She spins it in the air, watching how the light shines.

“You’re nervous.”

She doesn’t look up. The wireframe’s spinning increases in speed. In the cool of the settling evening, the light seems to glow that much brighter. She can hear voices calling from the alleyways below, fast-paced Spanish. “Of course I am. There are several variables that could go wrong with this scheme. Somebody could have discovered the teleporter pad. We could be ambushed. The distance could be too great. The technology could malfunction.”

Purple appears in the background of her vision, and she knows that Sombra is just in front of her, but she keeps her attention on the hard light, although concentrating is an increasingly difficult task.

“We both know the plan’s foolproof, Satya, that isn’t what’s worrying you. Unless they blame Los Muertos. That would be a bummer.”

She squashes it into a disc, like a Frisbee that rotates between her palms. “We will be revealing ourselves. Or, more accurately, I will be revealing myself. I suppose it’s alright for you. Vishkar will be able to find me. I will not be safe.”

A laugh. She doesn’t always understand why Sombra laughs, but she does it a lot. It's not unpleasant, not necessarily, but she still doesn't understand it. It has been a few days since she was freed, a few days for her to shower and for Sombra to find her some new clothes and for her to somehow make herself less haggard, but in those few days she has come no closer to truly understanding her ally-of-sorts. All she has deduced is that Sombra is someone who takes pride in being an enigma.

“Oh, Talon will know it’s me. Explosions are a Talon hallmark. They’ll see it’s not them and put two and two together.”

“Four.” Satya mutters. A cube, now, that floats in the air, lazily bobbing up and down. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. This is the start, isn’t it?”

She finally looks up to see that grin, so audacious, so self-assured, that she can’t help but replicate it. The past few days have been among the strangest of her life. She feels as though she is careering down a path that, six months ago, she would have tried to claw herself back from at all costs.

Satya adds to the cube until it becomes a teleporter base, and as soon as it has phased into existence the soft blue glow indicates that it is working. At least the distance is not an issue, she supposes.

“Satya.” Sombra’s voice is gentler now as they both stare into the cerulean portal in front of them. How strange, her capacity for tenderness. It feels almost paradoxical yet it still sounds so raw and organic. “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”

She turns her head to face the hacker. This is new territory, this is terrifying, and for some reason she cannot wait.

“I am done with doing things that I don’t want to do.” She says, then steps into the light

* * *

 

At half past four in the morning, Hana wakes to an aggressive thumping on her door, and out of spite she almost considers just not opening it and going back to sleep. She has no doubts that it’s Lúcio, probably coming to confront her with another list of inaccuracies for her to solve. It would almost be what he’d deserve for being such a jerk the previous evening – or was it that morning?

Either way, at that point he begins to yell, so Hana drags herself out of bed and across the room, opening the door with a look venomous as a snake pit. If she hears tomorrow that he has woken anyone else on his rampage, she's going to drag him to Mercy and get him some sleeping pils. Lúcio’s supposed sleep after she left could not have lasted long, for he is still wide awake.

“You want to wake up the whole girl’s dormitory?” She hisses before dragging him inside. “Make it quick. I actually wanted to sleep, you know.”

She has to take a few steps backwards as he all but shoves his tablet in her face. At first Hana mutters in protest, but all profanities cease when she sees the image on the screen.

There is a town with a gaping hole in the middle and a field of rubble. The whole image is grey with smoke rising into the skies, with clouds of dust. She can’t make out much else of the wreckage, and Hana will admit that she’s rather glad of the fact. She can almost taste the smoke, the dust clogging her lungs. It makes her feel sick. It looks like a nightmare, it reminds her of Colossal Omnics and destroyed cities and death, so much death.

She looks up at him, all thoughts of sleep now far, far away. “What – where’s that?”

“Lumerico. Mexico. Have you heard of them?”

She has. The reality of what is actually on the screen dawns on her. “Talon?”

He shakes his head. “They started looking through the rubble. Guess what they found?”

“I’m not playing guessing games.”

He lowers the tablet to look at her. “A teleporter base. Hard light.”


	3. Trust Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The attack on Lumerico forces Overwatch to plan a course of action, and Sombra and Symmetra make their own plan to flee Mexico. However, the danger of their predicament and Satya's own demons begin to cause fractures between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not dead? I started university and generally have had a crazy time, but I'd already written a lot of this chapter and I'm a sucker for writing Symmetra (and writing from Hana's perspective).

The room is disgusting. The decoration is garish – mustard yellow and the green of an unripe banana – not to mention outdated. There are stains on the wall and the ceiling, and Satya eventually has to stop looking because more just seem to appear and trying to think of what they are is nauseating. The air conditioning doesn’t work either, and the window can only open a few inches. She’s choking, it’s stiflingly hot and she just wants to melt into the sheets. Sweat coats her skin, and she’d shower to wash it off immediately if the shower were any better.

She is sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, trying her best to clean her prosthetic arm. At Vishkar she could afford to give it proper maintenance. Now dust and sand and grime have settled in the smooth joints and crevices, and try as she will she cannot restore it to its former pristine colour.

The small television in front of her is babbling in high-speed Spanish. She knows the basics; she learned specifically to assist with diplomacy in Venezuela. It shows footage of the incident on loop, then switches to pictures of the wreckage, then an eyewitness interview, then back to the footage again. It makes her feel almost as sick as the stains on the wall, but she is too numb. It is like standing in the office as Sanjay bleeds out into the floor. Blood pools around her feet, and she is aware that she feels ill but only really feels it by proxy.

Sombra is reclining against the pillows, a holographic screen projected in front of her which she is furiously tapping away at so that it is an ever-changing blur of purple and faces and symbols that Satya does not understand. She looks up and offers a cheerful smile.

“There’s more online if you want to see it.”

Satya does not say that she’s not sure if she wants to see it. Instead she asks: “This place has free wifi?”

A shrug. “All wifi is free wifi if you’re a good enough hacker.”

She goes back to trying to clean her hand, struggling to get into the fine joints Maybe if she got some lens cleaning solution? It would be cheap and inconspicuous, maybe even adequate. It still functions, of course, but no matter what kind of a dump she is hiding in, Satya has standards. “We can’t stay here for long.”

“Agreed. The breakfast buffet’s just a joke.”

“They’ll find us if we stay in one place for too long.” Satya replies. “I suggest that we go south through Guat to Nicaragua. Then we should take a boat to a Pacific island, and go from there to mainland Asia.”

Sombra actually swipes her screens away. She’s dressed only in a tank top and cycling shorts. It exposes all of her enhancements, the delicate cobweb of wiring that runs across her skin, like veins yet more ordered, more direct, like her. A light violet light pulses as her clawed nails dismiss the screen. It’s fascinating to watch her, so lively and fundamentally human yet so far separated from the average person by the very basis of what she is, what she’s made of herself and her body. “No. They’ll be extra tough on the borders, because they’ll be expecting that the perp will be trying to escape. We’re best going north then finding our way to Europe. It’ll be easier to go east from there.”

Satya raises an eyebrow. “What makes you think the northern border will be any more lenient than the southern?”

A smirk forms on her face. She isn’t wearing lipstick now, and it’s a surreal sight. “Los Muertos used to work with this gang. Deadlock. Not what they used to be, but I can call in some favours to get us across the border without being noticed. Or I could just-”

“We’re best not drawing attention.” Satya cuts in hastily. “Whilst I’m sure you have… methods, I propose we take the most discreet. Besides, Vishkar has less of a hold in North America.”

“Deadlock it is.”

The news report has looped back to pictures of the wreckage. Satya can’t help but look. Where Lumerico once was is now a wasteland. She understands enough Spanish to hear the approximate death toll figures, and she wishes she didn’t.

Suddenly the screen goes dark. Then words appear.

_¿Ta b?_

She doesn’t turn around, just stares at the screen. It is difficult to be honest. “ _Muy bien, gracias._ ”

* * *

The atmosphere around the table is decidedly frosty. Hana rubs her tired eyes and wishes for something to break the tension. After Lúcio alerted him to the news, Winston woke the whole base for an emergency meeting. Usually, she’d derive some humour from all the Overwatch team having a meeting in their pyjamas, but not in this situation. The footage, projected at the front, has rested on a still of the smouldering wreckage. It reminds her of her darker nightmares, of ruined cities and colossal omnics.

The topic of debate right now is whether the team should go straight to Mexico, or go to the borders to intercept Vaswani’s escape and, if so, which one. McCree’s saying north, Mercy’s saying south, 76 is saying the discussion is a waste of time when they could go straight to Dorado and everyone seems to have an opinion except for her. She wants to go back to sleep, she wants to go back to fighting easy missions and not this. Everyone seems to have in depth knowledge of routes and tactics. She knows how to operate a mech. There are often times in Overwatch when Hana’s inexperience makes her feel glaringly out of place, and this is one of them. She feels ill.

Winston makes the decision to split. Tracer, Reinhardt and Genji go south. McCree, Ana and Pharah go north. 76, Mei and Mercy go straight to Dorado to investigate and try to assist in relief efforts.

As for Hana and Lúcio? He doesn’t say anything, but Winston asks them both to stay after the briefing. Once it’s done, he stares at them warily, just waiting for an eruption of outrage. Hana’s too tired to even try pacifying Lúcio once he starts. She remembers how carefree he’d been just a few days before, watching terrible movies with her and stuffing their faces. The case of Satya Vaswani has changed him, and she’s not sure it’s for the better.

“I’m the one who found this and now I’m getting sidelined?”

Winston sighs wearily. They’re all too tired for this.

“Lúcio, Vishkar technically don’t even know that you’re _here._ We can’t possibly have you involved in this any more than you already are. We’re protecting you.”

The DJ’s arms are folded, his jaw set grimly. Hana has always admired his passion – his singleminded drive that propels him and everyone around him towards their goals – but this stubbornness, this refusal to budge, is part of that package deal and it’s quite frankly exhausting at times.

“This isn’t about Vishkar anymore. This is about making sure more innocent people don’t _die_ , okay? They can suck it up and so can I.”

Winston looks at her in desperation. Hana tries to tell him with her eyes that she’s not even sure if she can do anything, but it’s a futile effort, so she rubs her eyes and speaks up.

“Look, I get what you’re saying. You know I understand.” And he does, he knows, he probably knows better than anyone in Overwatch.“Look at it this way. With everyone else gone, it’s only going to be Winston and Torbs here at base. Just because we’re chasing down Vaswani doesn’t meant Talon won’t attack. You and I just have to help hold down the fort.”

He stares at her, and even though Hana knows her argument hasn’t won his heart, it’s won his mind, and she can settle for that much.

As they leave to go back to bed, Winston smiles gratefully at her. She manages one in response, but she knows she’s not getting any more sleep that night. The smouldering wreckage of Dorado hovers in the back of her thoughts.

* * *

 

It is late at night; between the sparse street lights, the shadows stretch for what feels like an age, with nothing but the lights of the truck lighting the way. It is not a busy road. They are taking the circuitous route. The country is on high alert, after all. But Sombra insists that she has contacts in Ciudad Juarez, ones that can give them the supplies they need, and then she has other contacts that know contacts that will get them across the border. It all feels too tenuous and loosely strung together for Satya to be comfortable with, but she knows she has no other choice. She could try to last on her own out in the desert, but there is the risk of dehydration and starvation. She could ty to last on her own in the towns and cities, but then she only has so long until the Mexican authorities – or, worse, Vishkar – find her. The crystal blue and flawless white of her arm is a patent, one that is unmistakeable. Perhaps in north America it will be easier. But for now they must be cautious. It has been less than a week since the Lumérico incident, and Mexico has had time to rally its response.

That is why they are on this dusty road at night, one filled with potholes and surrounded by desert in every direction that she looks. Sombra is sleeping in the passenger seat, curled into a ball. Her jacket has been folded, wedged between her shoulder and her head as a makeshift pillow. Satya could not sleep even if she tried, but Sombra looks peaceful. In the dim half-light, the neon throbbing of her cybernetic enhancements seems to pulse with each inhale and exhale, almost calmingly so. It does not, of course, it is only a trick of the light, but Satya does not mind. It is only mildly distracting. She keeps her eye on the road mostly, but the glowing in her peripheral vision is comforting. It reminds her that she is not alone.

She doesn’t know how she feels, and it is these nights alone that torment her the most. She cannot help but trust, and she hates herself for it. Historically, trust has taken much from Satya and given her little in return, but her choices are limited here. It is concerning that the trusting itself does not scare her, that it feels easy and natural. She should know better.

Satya tries to stave off these thoughts and keep her eyes on the road. It has been a long time since she has seen another motorist, which is reassuring. She wishes that Sombra had stolen her photon projector as well as her arm, if only because she feels so defenceless without it, but beggars can’t be choosers. She appreciates her freedom, tenuous as it may be. At least she has an arm now, at least she can still create, play with real light rather than building skyscrapers in her mind.

But she’s tired. Figuratively, yes. But also literally. When she tries to sleep, her dreams are no hospitable refuge. Sometimes, they are of wreckage and devastation, smoke that seems to choke her throat. Other times she is in a tomb of white, white invading her skull. And, just the night before, she had woken up in a cold sweat, her chest as tight as it was when she could smell the fires of Rio de Janeiro.

She does not talk about these problems to Sombra. She would have spoken of them to Uda once, but this is different. Satya keeps moving onward, because it’s all she can afford to do.

There is a silhouette against the already dark night in the distance. A vehicle of some sorts. A truck, it seems sizable. It is a nebulous figure, hard to distinguish, and Satya tries to keep her eyes on the road instead of getting distracted. Another motorist is nothing to be concerned about, even though she is instinctively cautious.

It doesn’t seem to be moving. Then again, the vehicle could have broken down, or run out of fuel. Perhaps because it is late the driver has stopped for the night. There is no station or motel in sight, but that is no concern of hers, she tells herself, gripping the wheel tighter. It is nothing to worry about.

Her gut twists, however, because she knows this is a dangerous area, and if this truck has stopped it has either broken down or it has a purpose, and there is a shape on the roof that looks like it belongs to a person, and as she gets closer she sees a longer shape, and she thinks fast before slamming a foot down on the accelerator and _praying –_

She hears the sound of a gunshot, briefly sees a woman with skin the colour of lilacs, feels the truck bump as it hits a pothole, hears glass shatter, all in one overwhelming moment that makes her want to scream, but a lump in her throat is choking her. But she’s no stranger to combat and conflict and chaos, not with her background with Vishkar, and quickly she turns to see a bullet near the top of the window and concludes that a pothole maybe just saved their lives.

There are engines churning behind her in pursuit, and Sombra is already awake, reaching for her guns. She glances in the rear view mirror and scowls.

“Already? Jeez.”

Satya doesn’t look back, just keeps her foot firmly on the accelerator and tries her best to keep the truck steady. It’s not made for this at all. They chose it because it was easy to steal, more inconspicuous to be travelling through the night, and they could hide in the back if necessary. But now it is inconvenient, too slow and too unwieldy, and it’s all Satya can do to keep it steady as possible. Their pursuers are faster, but they had the head start.

There is a _thunk_ from the back of the truck. Satya glances in the mirror but she can’t see anything, her heart is racing at a million miles an hour. Sombra is swearing colourfully in Spanish, some phrases she knows and some she doesn’t. She kicks down the already fractured window before turning to Satya and winking.

“Just keep driving, okay?”

And then she’s gone, disappeared into thin air with only a flashing light where she once was. Satya knows she’s full of surprises, her bag of tricks is practically bottomless, but her heart still leaps and when she hears thuds from the truck roof, she almost slips into panic.

But the sound of a bullet hitting the side reminds her that she can’t afford to do that. Their pursuers are close, dangerously close. Satya can’t outrun them, not in this truck, and if the situation doesn’t change soon a bullet to the tire will put her at their mercy, and she’s not armed, still so week from those months of imprisonment, can’t hold herself in a fight like this. The old Satya, Symmetra, might have been able to, but the odds aren’t looking good for her.

The car behind them is getting closer, and the only idea Satya has is a reckless and stupid one, but it’s that or get caught. Sombra is becoming a bad influence on her.

Against all her preservation instincts, Satya takes her hands off the wheel and begins to sculpt the light.

Almost the moment that she lets go, the truck begins to veer, and she has to grit her teeth to try and concentrate instead of being sick. Her foot is still on the accelerator. It’s been a long time since she’s had to build under such immense pressure, but it’s simple and easy enough to imagine.

But she can’t do it all from here. Still keeping her foot down, she tries to lean out of her window.

Something goes wrong – she must have nudged the wheel with her hip or something in the process – because the truck suddenly swerves, heading off the road and towards the desert, in the rear view mirror she can see a blur of purple and blue flung off the truck and onto the road, but she just about manages to hold the design together long enough for it to materialise.

The sound of the car hitting the wall she made, white hard light, but she can’t wait around to see the devastation because she immediately goes back to the wheel, trying to rein a hold on the vehicle as it careens across the sand, aware that she might have just lost her only companion and simultaneously desperate to go back and desperate to escape.

She doesn’t have to choose. In a flash, the woman is in the seat next to her, battered and panting. Satya does not slow down, does not head back to the road, just keeps driving. She is aware of Sombra telling her to stop, but she does not, even when all that surrounds them is a sea of sand.

But she sees Sombra reach out a hand, presumably to commandeer the truck as she does with most technology, and suddenly, violently, slams a foot down on the brakes. The jolt is a lash of a stop, her seatbelt practically winding her, but that is irrelevant. Sombra was not wearing a seatbelt and is slammed against her seat, losing grip of her pistol that skids across the dashboard, and Satya just manages to grab it before they’ve come to a halt.

“Jesus fuck, Satya, what the hell was that?” Sombra demands. She normally lives for danger, but there is concern in her expression. Her arms are scraped from where she hit the road, a bruise blossoming on her shoulder.

Her hand is shaking. She can tell because as she points the gun back at the hacker, she can’t seem to hold it still. Looking down the barrel of her own gun, Sombra’s face goes from confused, to shocked, to something else. It isn’t fear. It is something that Satya thinks she knows, thinks she’s felt and understands, but right now her thoughts are pouring down like an avalanche and she can’t sort them out.

“Satya-“

“Don’t call me Satya.” Her voice is smaller than she would have liked it to be. Weaker. It trembles like her hand that she can’t hold still no matter how much she wills it.

Sombra is cautious. She’s never heard her tiptoe around her words like this. She’s always been so confident, so much that Satya has come to see it as a defining characteristic

“Satya, will you please put down the gun?”

“No. I will not put it down until you explain who they were and how they found out and exactly _what_ you have dragged me into.”

“Sat- Symmetra,” Sombra gestures her hands as if she were taming a wild animal. “I told you Talon would be on our trail. I didn’t expect it to happen so _fast-_ “

_“Stop lying_.” She hisses, her grip on the gun tightening. “This is a trap, isn’t it? You’re playing me. Double bluffing. It is all just a plan to leave me hunted, wanted, so that the only safety I can find is by pledging my allegiance to Talon. That is why you rescued me, is it not? Because I’d be a valuable asset?”

“That isn’t-“

“Then why did you rescue me?” She almost shouts it. In the silence of the midnight desert, with only the bright stars to witness, it feels like the loudest sound in the world.

“Because I liked you, dammit, and I wanted to help!”

That silences her. Sombra’s eyes – somehow a softer violet than her enhancements – stare into hers. She can’t hold the gun still.

“Look, one day I’m testing my hacking and I’m on the Vishkar servers – you know they record everything you say, even your notes? Although I altered that – and there’s a girl losing her mind, my translator programme can’t keep up. She looks like she needs help. I ask if she’s okay, because somebody has to, and before I know it this girl’s my pen friend from across the world. And I care about her, she’s my friend, I can’t fucking help it. So yes, when that girl ends up imprisoned, I help her. And I want to keep on helping her and bring down the fuckers ruining lives. Is that enough for you?”

Satya’s better judgement is screaming at her to fire. Her grip on the gun steadies as she calms.

“You need to tell me everything about Talon, about what we’re up against. In Ciudad Juarez, you need to find a way for me to procure a weapon. And I swear, until you do so I am keeping this gun, and if you make one move to betray me I will shoot you.”

Sombra can hear the lack of conviction in Satya’s voice. In the back of her mind Sanjay’s blood pools on the carpet, but her friend (for lack of a sufficient term to describe whatever exists between them) smiles uneasily.

“I’m sorry. I know this must be hard for you. But I’m on your side. You can trust me.”

Satya shouldn’t trust her.

(She does anyway.)


End file.
